Finding bliss in a small reserve

Sunday

It was the clash of natural sound and human-manufactured noise — the perfect symbol of everyday life barely managing an articulation worth heeding.

It was the clash of natural sound and human-manufactured noise — the perfect symbol of everyday life barely managing an articulation worth heeding.

I was standing in the kitchen of my little apartment in Sandwich just after 1 p.m., gobbling down a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich as quickly as I could before returning to work. To keep my adrenalin up — I had been awake since 3:48 a.m., fidgeting over all I had to get done that day — I had flipped on the radio and was listening to a talk show. All of a sudden, the station seemed to fade to static and the sound, almost like soft waves breaking on a beach, broke up the voices of the show's host and callers.

I stopped, mid-stride, and cocked my head, unsure whether it was the radio or some sound filtering in through the slider and window screens. I walked out onto the deck, stared out over the tree line and watched blackbirds rocking and dipping in the air over the canopy, crying and calling — their staging call. The vocalizations taken together had — as they always seem to me to have when blackbirds congregate — a tenor of distress, almost as if the excitement of all those scores of blackbirds tumbling together into the treetops were too much for them to bear.

Now in the background, the talk show droned on, the human voices rising and falling with outrage and aggravation, the sound of people on the edge of frayed nerves and desperate social or political developments. Of course, so much of the talk show these days is hyperbole anyway, whether it comes from the political left or right, the evangelical or secular, the professional or the working stiff.

For a minute, everything felt as if it were turning upside down, topsy-turvy, the human chatter and the avian clamor. But almost as quickly, the sense of things being upended or turned inside out faded away, just as the calls of the birds ebbed off toward the beaches along the bay. I could not tell immediately if the silence fell because the birds had departed, or whether the uproar had ebbed like a tide because the birds were settling in and simmering down for a moment.

But for a moment, the outdoor world was more or less quiet and still. I could still hear the radio blaring behind my back, but it took nothing to walk back into the kitchen and turn it off without thought. All I wanted was silence.

I had been talking just the night before with a friend who is writing a book about her own experience of setting aside time regularly for self-imposed silence. We spoke briefly about how rare it is to find any place or any time to keep silence, to keep vigil for the qualities of stillness and serenity, tranquility and peace. She told to me about learning that, indifferent parts of Europe, small gardens are being set aside for silence, a conservation effort that originally had been designed to give cancer patients an opportunity for the healing power of quiet in natural surroundings.

It occurred to me then that it would be a perfect use now and then for the wildflower garden at the Thorton Burgess Society's Green Briar Nature Center in Sandwich, which is one of the most blissful, small reserves of health and stability I know of on Cape Cod. Comprising more than 300 species of plants, the garden includes a bank shaded with locusts, a meadow with full sun and an expansive swamp. The garden's purpose — which is sufficient in its present form — is to afford the opportunity to teach visitors about both native wildflower species and many others also incorporated into this calming corner of the Cape.

Every time I have visited the wildflower garden, it has been deserted, except for the company of plants and flowers that seem complete all on their own, as though human intervention or intrusion were of little note. Of course, that isn't true: The beauty here is possible only because of the devotion and hard work of botanist Shirley G. Cross, horticulturist Catherine Paulson and a handful of volunteers.

One of the most appealing things about the garden is that visitors can walk through anytime, though their tours can be enhanced with a booklet that offers a record of the history of the garden and its plants. But the plants and flowers also are labeled outdoors, and one could spend hours pouring over the open book of the little garden that is cradled by a mere quarter-acre of land.

I suppose there's something to be said for leaving things as they are, working well there at the center. Perhaps it is superfluous and utterly unnecessary to set aside a time when complete quiet would reign over a small tract that already is brimming with silence and peace. Enough that the flowers are the only riot, and that of color and delight.

But we should do it wherever we can, designate a space apart for the symphony and harmonies of silence. Imagine the salve it would be for the psyche, not to even consider the soul, to have the loudest argument be the dull hum of late-summer bees, the greatest debate the rustle of leaves in the slight breeze at dusk, the restless crowd the company of chipmunks and garter snakes and people tending to weeds and watering. The agitation of beauty, the ferment of flowers, could give us rest.

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